Want to see that next awesome raid, complete with the never before seen encounter mechanics and all that cool shit? Cool, buy my $30 content patch, spend one month grinding the badges to be able to do that raid, spend the next month actually DOING that raid... and by time you're starting to get bored, I've started it over again with another $30 content patch.

My arguments don't serve yours, so ignore them? People don't play these games to play them, they play them to have fun. A number of the population, for various and whatever reasons, will continue to play the game long after it has lost it's 'fun-factor', but initially? If you don't have compelling something, nobody is going to pay you jack. At this point of the gamers psyche, you could base your loot scheme around flying dildos and nobody will care and you will earn no money if you have no compelling gameplay/story/whatever.

I didn't ignore them. I just figured people would be intelligent enough to understand that, if the game isn't fun initially, people won't play it.

I'm talking about what happens months or even years down the road, not what happens in the first three months.

Izawwlgood wrote:I'll probably check this out sometime in the next week; is there a recommend a friend thing in place that someone wants to benefit from?

The game hasn't released yet - while there is no official release date as of yet, speculation puts the date somewhere around q1/q2 2012. The game has reportedly only been played in-house, not even a Friends & Family alpha.

Hmm... or were you talking about Guild Wars 1?

Beardhammer wrote:

Ortus wrote:e yours, so ignore them? People don't play these games to play them, they play them to have fun. A number of the population, for various and whatever reasons, will continue to play the game long after it has lost it's 'fun-factor', but initially? If you don't have compelling something, nobody is going to pay you jack. At this point of the gamers psyche, you could base your loot scheme around flying dildos and nobody will care and you will earn no money if you have no compelling gameplay/story/whatever.

I didn't ignore them. I just figured people would be intelligent enough to understand that, if the game isn't fun initially, people won't play it.

I'm talking about what happens months or even years down the road, not what happens in the first three months.

You're talking about a game that hasn't been released yet, and then wondering why I'm not thinking in the mindset of it actually being years after release? A certain modicum of thought should certainly go in to thinking that far ahead before deciding to play a game that could possibly hold your interest for far longer than a few measly years, but let us be honest here: do my arguments, and their relations to yours, differ due to the timeline of a games lifespan?

People will up and quit a game when it ceases to be fun, far more so than any other reason to quit. It's happening by the droves with World of Warcraft right now.

Not to mention that appeal to frivolous spending is hardly an argument against a good game. A lot of that talk about nailing customers for extra iterations just sounds like what we currently do with clothes, cars, and about anything non-essential like buying the newest cellphone model.

What matters is that the gameplay can be made stand-alone so that aesthetics and metrics isn't the only driving factor to playing the game, like it currently is with WoW.

WoW lost me because it truly showed that the RPG portion is secondary to the metrics grind. Cataclysm's questing experience to lv85 was marvelous and I loved the storyline, especially Vash'jor. And then at 85 the story came to a closing halt and I suddenly found myself bashing my head against the same bosses for weeks in the same-looking and poorly explained environment (ok, BoT is a given, but Blackwing Descent? Come on, did they bother to explain why they brought Nefarian back, and how he's unscathed? Or any of the non-final bosses in the raids having no backstory whatsoever besides Atramedes?).

WoW basically shit on the lore that made it interesting as an RTS. It trivialized deaths of monumental characters like Illidan, and Arthas's treatment was so poor. Seriously, Sylvanas wasn't there for Arthas's death?

Ysera still doesn't have her unique dragon model, and Nozdormu and Ysera and Alexstrasza (sp?) all got recycled part of already existing character models (not saying they look bad, but it's fucked up wen less resources are dedicated to fucking aspects than some unique model for the Mary Sue that is the human king or Garrosh, some of the most caricaturesque characters in the franchise).

WoW's storytelling took a huge nosedive in favor of the Skinner Box elements.

Since Guild Wars can simply follow a purely aesthetic route instead of the gear power gaps that were present in WoW and made it such a treadmill experience, players don't feel pressured to skip past the storyline because the products of the storyline are not made obsolete at the rate WoW does. You do not gimp yourself by doing a full playthrough.

In Guild Wars I can get a set of armor in a day or two. In WoW IF I raided hardcore, I'd get a set in a month. And only if I raided or did arenas. Power gap between casual and hardcores was immense because of gear (not legit) versus time spent learning and mastering the mechanics (legit).

P.S. You will not be able to transfer your GW character to GW2, but you will be able to reserve your GW name and gain items via Hall Of Monument achievements from GW1. They have strictly said they dont want new players to feel disadvantaged, so HoM rewards will be purely aesthetic, and the reason for not allowing character transfers lies not only in the 250 years worth of lore span between the original and its sequel, but also on the difference in classes available.

Belial wrote:That's charming, Nancy, but all I hear when you talk is a bunch of yippy dog sounds.

Izawwlgood wrote:I'll probably check this out sometime in the next week; is there a recommend a friend thing in place that someone wants to benefit from?

The game hasn't released yet - while there is no official release date as of yet, speculation puts the date somewhere around q1/q2 2012. The game has reportedly only been played in-house, not even a Friends & Family alpha.

Hmm... or were you talking about Guild Wars 1?

Beardhammer wrote:

Ortus wrote:e yours, so ignore them? People don't play these games to play them, they play them to have fun. A number of the population, for various and whatever reasons, will continue to play the game long after it has lost it's 'fun-factor', but initially? If you don't have compelling something, nobody is going to pay you jack. At this point of the gamers psyche, you could base your loot scheme around flying dildos and nobody will care and you will earn no money if you have no compelling gameplay/story/whatever.

I didn't ignore them. I just figured people would be intelligent enough to understand that, if the game isn't fun initially, people won't play it.

I'm talking about what happens months or even years down the road, not what happens in the first three months.

You're talking about a game that hasn't been released yet, and then wondering why I'm not thinking in the mindset of it actually being years after release? A certain modicum of thought should certainly go in to thinking that far ahead before deciding to play a game that could possibly hold your interest for far longer than a few measly years, but let us be honest here: do my arguments, and their relations to yours, differ due to the timeline of a games lifespan?

People will up and quit a game when it ceases to be fun, far more so than any other reason to quit. It's happening by the droves with World of Warcraft right now.

And yet WoW is still raking in embarassing amounts of money. Why? BECAUSE THEY HAVE PEOPLE ADDICTED. Those people don't even care if it's fun - it's long past the point of something as trivial as "fun" for them, it's all about getting that next piece of gear or companion pet or special achievement.

Seriously, go read that fucking article. I'll wait.

Done reading it? Good. Now you can maybe understand why the game only has to be fun long enough to get you hooked - once they've got you hooked, it's just a matter of limiting your fix to the point where they maximize profits without pissing you off to the point that you try to break the addiction.

At any rate - and this is something SOME game developers are slowly beginning to realize, I hope - you can't make an MMO and a story-driven game at the same time, because they're two completely different beasts. MMOs are primarily a business, a sort of sustainable source of income for your business - you keep adding bits and pieces here, they keep feeding you money, and if you're doing it right, you make a good profit off of it and you can use those profits for other projects (the profit is already including funds subtracted to continue producing the crack for your addicts.) A story-driven game must have a logical beginning and ending, which means it can't really be an MMO, since an MMO doesn't have an ending until it's no longer profitable to keep it going. I suppose you could have quest lines and shit that have self-contained stories, but those aren't going to keep your MMO afloat... unless you use the "buy my content patch" model I mentioned earlier.

Beardhammer wrote:Want to see that next awesome raid, complete with the never before seen encounter mechanics and all that cool shit? Cool, buy my $30 content patch, spend one month grinding the badges to be able to do that raid, spend the next month actually DOING that raid... and by time you're starting to get bored, I've started it over again with another $30 content patch.

If your player base is people who don't get bored after a month of grinding, or, really, about 10 minutes, you don't have an audience. Actually, if you have to grind for a month to get to the content, you don't even really have a game.

I mean I don't understand what you're really getting at, here. If your point is that if you took WoW, and changed nothing but the pay structure, that it would have all of the same problems. Then yeah, sure, that's a tautology.

My point is that the grinding in WoW is intended to keep you playing the game for a long time. If you don't have a subscription model, that earns exactly zero extra dollars. In fact, the model you're describing is just episodic content. It's not novel at all. Nobody who makes those games puts grinding in them, because grinding is not fun, and when people are thinking about whether or not they want to buy the next episode, they're going to think about whether or not the previous episode was good. It goes without saying that making your game shitty on purpose is bad for sales.

Plus, it's a completely different cost-benefit analysis. Because people feel invested in WoW, having to pay the subscription fee to be able to play it at all matters. If, every two months, you get to ask yourself, "do I really want to pay to keep playing this game," instead of just doing it, then the addiction thing doesn't matter.

The Great Hippo wrote:I am starting to regret having used 'goat-fucker' in this context.

You're talking about a game that hasn't been released yet, and then wondering why I'm not thinking in the mindset of it actually being years after release? A certain modicum of thought should certainly go in to thinking that far ahead before deciding to play a game that could possibly hold your interest for far longer than a few measly years, but let us be honest here: do my arguments, and their relations to yours, differ due to the timeline of a games lifespan?

People will up and quit a game when it ceases to be fun, far more so than any other reason to quit. It's happening by the droves with World of Warcraft right now.

And yet WoW is still raking in embarassing amounts of money. Why? BECAUSE THEY HAVE PEOPLE ADDICTED. Those people don't even care if it's fun - it's long past the point of something as trivial as "fun" for them, it's all about getting that next piece of gear or companion pet or special achievement.

Seriously, go read that fucking article. I'll wait.

Done reading it? Good. Now you can maybe understand why the game only has to be fun long enough to get you hooked - once they've got you hooked, it's just a matter of limiting your fix to the point where they maximize profits without pissing you off to the point that you try to break the addiction.

At any rate - and this is something SOME game developers are slowly beginning to realize, I hope - you can't make an MMO and a story-driven game at the same time, because they're two completely different beasts. MMOs are primarily a business, a sort of sustainable source of income for your business - you keep adding bits and pieces here, they keep feeding you money, and if you're doing it right, you make a good profit off of it and you can use those profits for other projects (the profit is already including funds subtracted to continue producing the crack for your addicts.) A story-driven game must have a logical beginning and ending, which means it can't really be an MMO, since an MMO doesn't have an ending until it's no longer profitable to keep it going. I suppose you could have quest lines and shit that have self-contained stories, but those aren't going to keep your MMO afloat... unless you use the "buy my content patch" model I mentioned earlier.

Does it make sense now?

I've read the article thrice in the past year, and several more times altogether. It lends no weight to your words. Perhaps if I viewed Blizzard or Arena Net or BioWare or any of the other game developers as a faceless entity; or perhaps I viewed the MMO genre as a nothing but a faceless formula for raking in income. Does story literally mean nothing to you? Gameplay? You're talking about shit that nobody cares about, as if it was most important*, and to the exclusion of all else. Go back to my original arguments, and look at our discussion as it represents the whole game, not just one part of the business model of a company.

*The article was meant as an interesting commentary on the 'other side' of an MMO. The other side, the less noticed side, not as the main attraction.

Beardhammer wrote:In regards to "all of our dudes are accomplished artists": How exactly does this relate to the game? Are you saying the game will be pretty? Well, probably, though I suppose art is up to interpretation.

I missed this earlier, sorry. Anyway,

Yeah, no, that wasn't my point. It relates to the game in the manner that there is way fucking more to a game than devious business schemes. Yeah, devious business schemes are kind of a big deal in the MMO genre, and yeah, a lot of low-budget MMOs do some devious shit, as do all of the high-budget MMOs. You know, actually, at this point: I don't even know how to properly convey this argument to you. You'll come back with, "BUT DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE?" or talk to me like this one article is the be-all-end-all of everything MMO.

Let's ignore the basis for creating and playing games altogether, the roots and recent recognition in the arts and sciences; you are, if anything, describing publishers. Not game developers, but publishers - the article, and your arguments, talk about what a publisher wants from the game, not what the player necessarily gives a flying crap about or what the actual developer wants from their game. And your arguments are valid, to an extent - that extent does not permeate the entire MMO genre to the exclusion of everything else.

Let's ignore the basis for creating and playing games altogether, the roots and recent recognition in the arts and sciences; you are, if anything, describing publishers. Not game developers, but publishers - the article, and your arguments, talk about what a publisher wants from the game, not what the player necessarily gives a flying crap about or what the actual developer wants from their game. And your arguments are valid, to an extent - that extent does not permeate the entire MMO genre to the exclusion of everything else.

And what the publisher wants out of the developer can have a major impact on the course the game takes, especially after it's gone gold and the publisher either sees a way to increase profits, or wants the game to start turning a real profit.

I don't really think DICE would voluntarily basically ignore the needs and requests of their customers, yet every Battlefield game I've played tends to have lousy support - small patches take forever to arrive, often don't fix very simple things that have been mentioned numerous times, and I still don't know if they ever got VoIP working right in BC2. I know that 2142 was a great game that's essentially dead now due to a lack of support, despite the necessary support not really being very significant (a bug fix here, a small UI bugfix there.) Hell, they said that a Steam version of 2142 was ready months ago, and it STILL hasn't arrived. It was direct from a high-ranking DICE employee that the Steam version was wrapped up and ready to go and would be going live within a week or two - three, four months later, it hasn't appeared and suddenly there's no more communication from them about it. EA's also been pushing a new Steam competitor digital distribution service for Battlefield 3 (among other games.) Coincidence?

It extends to a lot of other developers with gigantic, corporate publishers looming over them. Word is that Activision mostly leaves Blizzard alone, but ask most any long-term Blizzard player (and I'm not talking about just World of Warcraft), and most of them will tell you that they noticed a downward trend in the quality of Blizzard's support after they got into the sack with Activision. In this case, I'm more likely willing to believe it's coincidence, but both SC2 and Cataclysm felt like they were rushed out the door before finishing touches were made (SC2 still had some significant balance issues when it went live, Cataclsym... well, you can just look at how many subscriptions they've lost since Cataclysm went out the door for that one.)

I absolutely agree that a game needs to have a compelling story and/or gameplay in order to draw players to it, and it DOES have some bearing on KEEPING them playing... but as I mentioned earlier, the whole Skinner Box method is what keeps players playing long after the game's ceased to be truly fun. There are a LOT of players in WoW that are probably addicted to the point that they'd almost have withdrawl symptoms if they quit. I know I had trouble finding things to do for the first week or so after I quit a few months ago - I was so used to logging in and doing my dailies and other things (what really amounted to chores or even a second job, looking back on it - I wasn't doing them because they were fun) that I couldn't figure out what to do with my newfound free time. If you don't see the irony in that... heh

I guess I'm just really leery of most any new game these days. I've been burned too many times over the past six or seven years, and the more I look at the games industry as a whole, the weaker my faith in the industry to put out great titles becomes. Hell, it's like that with music these days, too. Seems like everything good was made ten or twenty years ago and we're just treading water until all the idiots die off so the good people can make a return

And can I just say, doing the EotN introductory quests with 55 health is somewhat troublesome. I need to either get to where ever it is people trade now, or for GWG to come back online so I can buy some cloth for new armour D:

And can I just say, doing the EotN introductory quests with 55 health is somewhat troublesome. I need to either get to where ever it is people trade now, or for GWG to come back online so I can buy some cloth for new armour D:

People are usually trading in Kamadan 1. Kaineng is usually dead, and LA is about half as busy as Kamadan. 55hp builds still work, but I'm not sure if you can 55hp your way through EotN. If you need platinum, let me know... I'm not sure if I have much anymore, but I only log on to RA occasionally and have no need of it.

Kamadan is the Nightfall place right? Might have to head there then if this person from the auction doesn't message me back. I know 55hp solo still works but trying to get through missions with it is difficult, it's actually pretty rare to find somewhere that doesn't have a counter for it.

I appreciate the offer but I don't want to beg for cash, I'm sure I can get back to my old farm crazy ways and build up some money again.

WvW looks awesome, and has been compared favorably to Dark Age of Camelot. I'm concerned about the frame rate for larger battles, though. One of the reviewers said that it dropped down to 15 fps when there were more than 20 people attacking in an area. Others had no problem, and it could be just an optimization thing, but still, I hope my old, decrepit laptop can play it.

Anyone else interested in playing this game as it gets closer to launch?

Interested? Definitely. The problem isn't with my interest level, it's with my amount of time. Between work, school, and all the other awesome games that are either out or coming out soon, I don't know if I'll have the time required to properly appreciate GW2. Which is unfortunate, because it looks really good from what I've seen so far.

The story so far:In the beginning the Universe was created.This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Pretty satisfied with the character customization of my human mesmer. Only toons I found hideous were the distorted male norns. Can't wait for sylvari and asura.

There's also the stress test for Monday the 14th from 2pm-9pm EST.

EDIT: Also, got my

and

They make a world of difference in staying mobile while pressing keys, allowing me to use my thumb for all movement while having a very ergonomic setup to use my four fingers for ability use and the mouse allows me to bind dodge, switch weapons, and important cooldowns effortlessly. Screw keyboards, I'm never going back to the old setup.

Belial wrote:That's charming, Nancy, but all I hear when you talk is a bunch of yippy dog sounds.

Well, I just spent about nearly 2,000 words describing class mechanics and linking videos, and the forums logged me out in the meantime and ate my post. So, pissed off as I am, I'll just direct you to the Guild Wars 2 wiki and search for the racial videos on youtube (sylvari, charr, human, norn, asura). I need to go vent some steam, might probably take a stab at it later if you need. I'm just annoyed right now.

wiki.guildwars2.com

Belial wrote:That's charming, Nancy, but all I hear when you talk is a bunch of yippy dog sounds.

I've only played 2 classes for a few days in total, but from what I saw each one actually had an interesting core theme - mesmers create illusions of themselves that can be used to attack and confused, while the necromancer gets to become a big evil ghost thing instead of dying and generally drains life force. So each class is distinct, but has multiple ways to use that main ability or if they prefer, mostly ignore it.

My main issue is that while a mesmer can switch between hacking close up with flashy purple swords and confusing magic or jump back and use chaos magic at mid range or fire purple lightning beams from long range or be an illusion spamming magic purple ninja or a couple of other things I forget, you don't really get any variation in colour. The mesmer makes purple flashes, the necromancer green, the guardian blue. That's probably the biggest issue in the game. Chainmail bikinis are also present but you do get choices - based on lucrece's screenshot above it may not be restricted to women, but I suspect that screenshot might be "town clothes".

Oh and the other disclaimer is that while it is a much better MMO than any other I've played, it still does have (at a very basic level) the same mechanics as WoW - target enemy, press ability buttons and you are fighting. If you stop reading there, the game probably isn't for you. In guild wars 2 however, you actually dodge attacks all the time. You are encouraged to team up at all points because it just spawns loot for each player that fought. The quests that exist are pushed forwards by various things and so you can always find a fun way to complete them. World events turn up regularly and teams form around them to complete it - higher levels don't dominate these because they're lowered to the level of the area. And there's a rather large blog post about how there are no healers, if you want to support a team you don't play health bar hero but rather support them with more interesting types of abilities instead.

I don't think I mentioned the story there. There are 5 races - in character creation you choose a couple of things based on your race (Charr can be Blood, Iron or Ash Legion) and that changes which story you play. Depending on your expectations, they will range from quite good to not-quite-as-cringe-inducing-as-most-games. Beyond the linear narrative, the world and its inhabitants are different, well developed and look amazing.

There is absolutely no way to go and describe every detail they did the right way because it's very nearly everything. You can join multiple guilds. You can play with friends on another realm (Not 100% sure you can jump across EU/US split but I think you can...?). I think you can combine them to join guilds on other realms. There are platforming levels/challenges. Crafting is interesting to figure out yourself. The bank system is quite good, you can dump crafting materials in from everywhere and they don't take up regular slots - it's also account wide so you can share crafting stuff across characters easily. They have this commitment to not make you grind (and I think it worked). They have no subscription fee - instead they have a real money store and even then everything I saw in there is either cosmetic or a temporary boost and you can trade in game currencies for it anyway (No pay to win type things).

So yes. Pretty cool. Please do set up a guild.

Hawknc wrote:Gotta love our political choices here - you can pick the unionised socially conservative party, or the free-market even more socially conservative party. Oh who to vote for…I don't know, I think I'll just flip a coin and hope it explodes and kills me.

Toeofdoom (can I just shorten this to ToD?), have you given any thought to which server you are going to make your home world? I'll probably try to get on Gate of Madness, though if the 25th is anything like the BWE3, I'll have to jump in pretty to do so (presuming of course they don't have more server space available than they did then).

Oh, in the likely case that the above is confusing for people thinking about playing the game: When you first log in with an account, the game will ask you to select a home world (your default server). You can play on any other server, provided you have friends there, but there are certain benefits and restrictions based on your home server. One of the features of the game (that I did not take part in during the Beta Weekends :/ ) is the server versus server PvP (WvW), where you and any other players from your home server work against players from two other servers (I believe) to control territory and win battles. Doing well in these events gives server-wide bonuses, based on home server. You always maintain your home server's bonus, so you can't spread out your friends on different servers and always play on the best performing server, or at least you can't do that to get the better benefits. Also, you can't participate in WvW from any server other than your home world.You can change home worlds for a cost, provided there is room on that server.

Look, you know it's serious when a bunch of people in full armor and gear come charging in to fight a pond of chickens - Steax

To the best of my knowledge the main reason to choose one is just the players on it and hoping it's good at WvW. So if there's a standard xkcd one I'll probably pick that. You can call me ToD if you like though it's more commonly shortened to toe, in fact I've been called toe quite a lot in real life.

Hawknc wrote:Gotta love our political choices here - you can pick the unionised socially conservative party, or the free-market even more socially conservative party. Oh who to vote for…I don't know, I think I'll just flip a coin and hope it explodes and kills me.

Well, I would nominate Gate of Madness, but I don't know how many people have access to the weekend head-start, so I don't know how feasible it would be to get everyone who is interested onto that server. One of the other guilds I am going to be in* is headquartered there, so that's where I shall be. However, I probably won't do too much WvW, so I wouldn't mind guesting up with y'all on a less populated server.

* Multiple guild joining is indeed an awesome feature.

Look, you know it's serious when a bunch of people in full armor and gear come charging in to fight a pond of chickens - Steax

I am super excited for Guild Wars 2, as I played Guild Wars 1 extensively (got to my 30 HOM points), and I'll be re-joining my old guild for the sequel. If people want more info, I've been in all 3 beta weekends and a few stress tests, plus I am trying to learn more of the lore.

Just pre-purchased yesterday, after dealing with NCSoft's bullshit about not accepting my card through their website, I just purchased through Amazon.

Payment issues aside, I'm totally pumped for this game now. The more I read about it, the more I get excited for it, and the more I want it right the hell now. Hopefully I can manage to find the time like I did with the first GW, which I loved and played the hell out of.

Wasn't there discussion of a guild or a common server we all would roll on at some point in this thread? Was there a consensus? I was anticipating playing on Sorrow's Furnace, but I don't think it really makes that big of a deal.

Looks like people I know will be playing on Sea of Sorrows, the "unofficial oceanic server". Anyway yeah we probably will do a guild at some point, though with xkcd groups in other MMOs I've found that most of the group is in a completely different time zone so it doesn't end up that practical. :/

Hawknc wrote:Gotta love our political choices here - you can pick the unionised socially conservative party, or the free-market even more socially conservative party. Oh who to vote for…I don't know, I think I'll just flip a coin and hope it explodes and kills me.

Myself and a few friends are likely to end up on Gandara(?) EU (unofficial UK server). Will post up here if we decide to stick with that. If anyone's looking for people to play with, feel free to PM me or post up here.

So, I've decided to have a Sylvari as my main.Someone unfortunately, given my desire to keep his name similar to my own meaning-wise, he will be called Padraig Fearchar... (my middle name is Patrick, and my last name means friend/friendly in its native tongue).

Look, you know it's serious when a bunch of people in full armor and gear come charging in to fight a pond of chickens - Steax